Industry
The status quo is changing for most industries as boundaries blur between fields due to innovation, disruption, and digitally-driven change. That’s why keeping abreast of emerging trends in sectors outside your own is vital, not only because your organization’s competitive landscape may be changing, but because there are universal, strategic lessons to learn from the opportunities and threats convergence poses for every marketplace. We examine emerging trends and the impact of evolving tech in key fields such as healthcare, financial services, telco, energy, mobility, and more to help you capitalize on the possibilities of the future while managing the challenges of today.
Recently Published
In this article, we present the promises and challenges of big data and analytics (BD&A) in healthcare, informed by our observations of and interviews with healthcare providers in the US and European Union (EU). We then provide a set of recommendations for capitalizing on the extraordinary innovation opportunities available through big data.
"Cloud" as a popular term has been around for only a few years, but the concepts of pay-as-you-go services and IT as a utility go back to the first hosted Web servers starting in the late 1990s. After 15 years or so, you would think that cloud technology would have standardized.
Often managers latch on to the methodologies and practices that happen to be in fashion -- the latest management BS! Some make desperate demands for their staff to react, perhaps by creating a service catalog, but without identifying who is going to use it and how it is to be used. Despite containing some really good guidance, ITIL can become a distraction, with organizations using it unsuccessfully as a safety blanket or shield.
I recently had the opportunity to hear Dr. Paul Roehrig, assistant VP of corporate strategy for the 140,000-person consulting firm Cognizant, talk about the coming changes in the workforce. Underpinning these changes, importantly, are high and, in parts of Europe, alarmingly high levels of unemployment.
Abstract
Business and IT professionals are rapidly embracing business architecture (BA) as a mainstream concept to recognize their needs, goals, and vision for business transformation. However, establishing a comprehensive, pragmatic BA practice is still in its primitive stage.
Executive Report
A Structured Approach to IT Cloud Migration
In Part I of this Executive Update series,1 we discussed modernizing core banking systems through the analogy of heart surgery as well as the approaches I have seen as banking IT strategies evolve in this era of change in the financial industry. In particular, we covered "putting shunts" in the "patient" through application transformation and integration.
The subject of this Executive Update may seem odd. I am borrowing an analogy that one of my banking clients uses to describe the requirements for transforming the company's core banking systems. They are the "cardiovascular" IT system for banks -- providing solutions that drive revenue-generating operations, such as account management, deposits, loans, and credit cards. The current core systems are largely product-oriented applications that are 20-plus years old and mainframe-based.